Land Use and Early Village Zoning
The First Village Zoning
Written by Beatrice Szekely, Village of Cayuga Heights Historian, for the village newsletter in December 2016 when a committee appointed by the Board of Trustees was completing a review of village zoning. The committee was asked to consider the recommendations made in the Cayuga Heights comprehensive plan adopted in 2014.
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For years it has been assumed that the first Cayuga Heights zoning legislation was passed in 1953. However, historical documents found in the basement of the village hall reveal that a zoning law was first adopted in 1925, ten years after the village was incorporated within the Town of Ithaca.(1) In the 1920s municipal governments all over the United States were passing zoning legislation to regulate land use.(2) The City of Ithaca passed a zoning law in 1923.(3)
Zoning in suburbs was typically prefigured by restrictions written into property deeds by real estate developers. In the case of Cayuga Heights these were the village founders, Ithaca attorneys Jared Newman and Charles Blood. They began marketing lots for housing shortly after purchasing several hundred acres of land north of the Ithaca city line as a joint venture in 1901.(4) |
Some of the deed restrictions placed by Newman and Blood were straightforward and quantifiable: only one building could be erected on a lot and setbacks from roadways were spelled out in feet.(5) Others were subjective and qualitative; garages, for example, could not face streets. Newman reserved the right to approve the house plans of customers employing as criteria what he considered to be “attractive to the public and neighboring owners.”(6) In newspaper ads and promotional brochures he talked repeatedly about the residential character of the subdivision and preserving the natural beauty of the surroundings. Newman and Blood dissolved their real estate partnership shortly after the incorporation of the village in 1915 but carried on separately selling lots with restrictions within its borders and on adjoining land in the Town of Ithaca.
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Minutes of the October 18, 1924 meeting of the Cayuga Heights board of trustees record the appointment of a three-man commission to draft a zoning “ordinance,” as village laws were called in New York at that time. Pursuant to Article VI-a of New York State Village Law the commission was asked to establish the “boundaries of zoning districts” within which particular types of land use would be permitted.(7) Its three members were Cornell forestry professor Arthur Recknagel of 523 Highland Road who was appointed chair, law professor George Bogert of 109 Cayuga Heights Road, and architecture professor George Young Jr. of 103 (now 107) Overlook Road.(8)
A year later a completed draft law was presented for discussion at a public hearing held on December 7, 1925 during which, according to a report in the Cornell Daily Sun, arguments were made for and against allowing fraternities in the village.(9) The draft was voted into law by the village board on December 10 and took effect on January 1, 1926.(10) |
The Cornell community expressed concern over the proposed zoning law's impact on fraternity houses. (Headline from the December 9, 1925 edition of the Cornell Daily Sun)
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ENDNOTES
(1) Unless otherwise noted, historical records cited below are in paper files held at Marcham Hall, the municipal building of the Village of Cayuga Heights, 836 Hanshaw Road, Ithaca NY 14850.
(2) Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, the Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford University Press, 1985), 241-43; David L. Ames and Linda Flint McClelland, Historic Residential Suburbs, Guidelines for Evaluation and Documentation for the National Register of Historic Places, National Register Bulletin (U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, September 2002), 33.
(3) City of Ithaca, N.Y., Building Zone Ordinance, Adopted May 22, 1923.
(4) Carol U. Sisler, “Newman and Blood, Developers of Cayuga Heights,” Enterprising Families, Ithaca, New York, Their Houses and Businesses (Ithaca, New York: Enterprise Publishing, 1986), 106.
(5) Jared Treman Newman, An Opportunity to Secure a Home Site on Cayuga Heights at Reduced Cost,” a 17-page brochure dated April 30, 1921.
(6) For example, the deed to a property that would become 115 Oak Hill Road which was sold by Newman to Seymour Barrett dated August 12, 1919, Tompkins County Book of Deeds 195, page 102, reproduced by Carol Sisler for Folder 5, “Correspondence of Charles Blood and Jared Newman, 1916-1937,” Cayuga Heights Collection, V-61-1-1, The History Center in Tompkins County from the original in the Jared Treman Newman Papers, Collection 2157 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
(7) Board of Trustees of the Village of Cayuga Heights (BOTVCH), Special Meeting Minutes, October 18, 1924: https://lfweb.tompkins-co.org/laserfiche/DocView.aspx?db=CayugaHeights&docid=322941.
(8) BOTVCH, Regular Meeting Minutes, December 4, 1924: https://lfweb.tompkins-co.org/laserfiche/DocView.aspx?db=CayugaHeights&docid=322953.
(9) “Cayuga Heights May Shut Out Chapter Houses,” Cornell Daily Sun, XLVI, no. 6, December 9, 1925.
(10) BOTVCH, Regular Meeting Minutes, December 10, 1925: https://lfweb.tompkins-co.org/laserfiche/DocView.aspx?db=CayugaHeights&docid=322958.
(1) Unless otherwise noted, historical records cited below are in paper files held at Marcham Hall, the municipal building of the Village of Cayuga Heights, 836 Hanshaw Road, Ithaca NY 14850.
(2) Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, the Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford University Press, 1985), 241-43; David L. Ames and Linda Flint McClelland, Historic Residential Suburbs, Guidelines for Evaluation and Documentation for the National Register of Historic Places, National Register Bulletin (U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, September 2002), 33.
(3) City of Ithaca, N.Y., Building Zone Ordinance, Adopted May 22, 1923.
(4) Carol U. Sisler, “Newman and Blood, Developers of Cayuga Heights,” Enterprising Families, Ithaca, New York, Their Houses and Businesses (Ithaca, New York: Enterprise Publishing, 1986), 106.
(5) Jared Treman Newman, An Opportunity to Secure a Home Site on Cayuga Heights at Reduced Cost,” a 17-page brochure dated April 30, 1921.
(6) For example, the deed to a property that would become 115 Oak Hill Road which was sold by Newman to Seymour Barrett dated August 12, 1919, Tompkins County Book of Deeds 195, page 102, reproduced by Carol Sisler for Folder 5, “Correspondence of Charles Blood and Jared Newman, 1916-1937,” Cayuga Heights Collection, V-61-1-1, The History Center in Tompkins County from the original in the Jared Treman Newman Papers, Collection 2157 at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
(7) Board of Trustees of the Village of Cayuga Heights (BOTVCH), Special Meeting Minutes, October 18, 1924: https://lfweb.tompkins-co.org/laserfiche/DocView.aspx?db=CayugaHeights&docid=322941.
(8) BOTVCH, Regular Meeting Minutes, December 4, 1924: https://lfweb.tompkins-co.org/laserfiche/DocView.aspx?db=CayugaHeights&docid=322953.
(9) “Cayuga Heights May Shut Out Chapter Houses,” Cornell Daily Sun, XLVI, no. 6, December 9, 1925.
(10) BOTVCH, Regular Meeting Minutes, December 10, 1925: https://lfweb.tompkins-co.org/laserfiche/DocView.aspx?db=CayugaHeights&docid=322958.
